1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an activation control apparatus and an activation control method thereof to be used to control the activation of an airbag apparatus and, more particularly, to an airbag apparatus activation control apparatus that is suitable in properly activating an airbag apparatus for protecting an occupant at the time of a collision of a vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
An activation control apparatus of an airbag apparatus is conventionally known as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-286257, which has a floor sensor that is disposed on a floor tunnel of a vehicle body and that outputs a signal corresponding to the impact that occurs on the floor tunnel, and which deploys an airbag when the value of a parameter based on the output signal of the floor sensor exceeds a threshold. This apparatus further has a satellite sensor that is disposed in a forward portion of the vehicle body and that outputs a signal corresponding to the impact received by the forward portion of the vehicle body. The apparatus increases the amount of reduction of the aforementioned threshold with increases in the impact received by the forward portion of the vehicle body that is detected based on the output signal of the satellite sensor. Therefore, the airbag deploys more easily if the impact that occurs on the forward portion of the vehicle body is greater. Thus, according to the above-described conventional apparatus, the airbag apparatus for protecting an occupant can be appropriately activated.
In the case of an offset collision or the like, the impacts received by right and left forward portions of the vehicle body are greatly different from each other. In the aforementioned conventional apparatus, satellite sensors are provided in right and left forward portions of the vehicle body. Therefore, if a vehicle having an arrangement as described above undergoes an offset collision, the satellite sensors output signals different from each other. Therefore, in a construction having a plurality of satellite sensors as described above, there is a need to process different signals outputted from different satellite sensors.